GSX V2 Announced- SODE Jetways and Animated Passengers

[Nyxx 6,993]

Looks great and I am sure when in beta they can tweak the speed.

A must buy me thinks.

[Kristiaan-D 2]

Looks great!

I wish and even beg them to upgrade the pushback procedure (my most important part of the Ground Handling process). I am quite impressed by the 'Better Pushback plugin' for xPlane (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H0sucua2Wc). I hope they could implement such pushback thing in P3D somewhere in the future.

[HighTowers 1,434]

22 minutes ago, Kristiaan-D said:

Looks great!

I wish and even beg them to upgrade the pushback procedure (my most important part of the Ground Handling process). I am quite impressed by the 'Better Pushback plugin' for xPlane (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H0sucua2Wc). I hope they could implement such pushback thing in P3D somewhere in the future.

I like that better pushback plugin from Xplane too, but it was quickly shot down by Umberto when I asked about it.  See here....

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,17082.0/topicseen.html

Was hoping they would be revamping the pushback system first ahead of this kind of thing, but the jetways and pax indeed add better immersion and much needed visual appearances. 

[Chock 17,769]

Looks good although I echo what everyone else says about the slow walking speed of the passengers and their lack of hand luggage although I appreciate that one is often working against the limitations of a program's capabilities when pushing the envelope feature-wise..

Yes it is true the ground crews walk pretty slowly in GSX at the moment, but that's less of an issue for me than passengers walking slowly; fact is, you'd actually get in trouble if you ran about on the ramp as employee. I know you can get away with the odd little jog here and there on the ramp at Manchester, but the security guys would definitely pull you up if you were running about near the aeroplanes at EGCC and I'm sure that's true everywhere else.

Besides, after lugging 250 overloaded suitcases, wheeelchairs, prams, golf bags, rucksacks, etc, on or off a train of baggage carts, chucking them onto an elevator, or stacking or unloading them whilst up in the baggage holds, or humping that big heavy fuel hose nozzle onto the connectors, or shoving a load of ULDs onto equipment - all whilst the clock is ticking - the last thing you'll feel like doing is running.. Put it this way, if you want to get in shape and end up with a six pack that Arnie would be proud of, get a job in either the baggage hall or on the ramp servicing airliners with fast turnarounds.

Edited June 12, 2018 by Chock

[nealmac 260]

It's not so much the speed of the passengers. I'd be more concerned with the quantity/rate. I reckon boarding time for a 777 could be up on 3 hours at that rate 😅

[Cruachan 705]

Can’t help wondering whether these comments regarding passenger movement are coming from an American audience where aircraft flights around the country are treated more like bus transportation. In the UK my experience while boarding a flight, any flight, is much more leisurely and controlled.

Mike

[Kristiaan-D 2]

1 hour ago, HighTowers said:

I like that better pushback plugin from Xplane too, but it was quickly shot down by Umberto when I asked about it.  See here....

Thanks for the headsup on that topic. I do see Umberto's point, however it would still be an great addition to set pushback paths and then save them for usage the next time. It makes the simmer less depending on files provided by others.

 

11 minutes ago, Cruachan said:

Can’t help wondering whether these comments regarding passenger movement are coming from an American audience where aircraft flights around the country are treated more like bus transportation. In the UK my experience while boarding a flight, any flight, is much more leisurely and controlled.

Mike

On this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSwSn5XI2tg) video (From 00:15 till 01:20) it shows quite OK on how it is going here in Europe on the leisure routes. On the more business orientated routes (especially on the LCC / no seat assignment) you see an bit higher pace or even jogging/running towards the first available opened aircraft door (Would be awesome if they could simulate PAX with differen paces, where some might even run to take-over other PAX or so...)

 

Edited June 12, 2018 by Kristiaan-D

[ErichB 3,638]

1 hour ago, HighTowers said:

I like that better pushback plugin from Xplane too, but it was quickly shot down by Umberto when I asked about it.  See here....

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,17082.0/topicseen.html

Was hoping they would be revamping the pushback system first ahead of this kind of thing, but the jetways and pax indeed add better immersion and much needed visual appearances. 

Thanks for asking about it.  I can see where he's coming from but I REALLY love that plug-in for Xplane

[honanhal 1,420]

54 minutes ago, Cruachan said:

Can’t help wondering whether these comments regarding passenger movement are coming from an American audience where aircraft flights around the country are treated more like bus transportation. In the UK my experience while boarding a flight, any flight, is much more leisurely and controlled.

Mike

Boarding from buses is almost unheard of in the US, actually. I don’t think I ever boarded a flight from a bus at a remote stand until I went abroad. Jetways are king.

I’ve never flown domestically in the UK, but I can tell you that I have experienced the mad dash from bus to air stairs on every continent except Antarctica. It’s nice to know that people everywhere are pretty much the same!

James

[anden145 2,280]

7 minutes ago, honanhal said:

Boarding from buses is almost unheard of in the US, actually. I don’t think I ever boarded a flight from a bus at a remote stand until I went abroad. Jetways are king.

I’ve never flown domestically in the UK, but I can tell you that I have experienced the mad dash from bus to air stairs on every continent except Antarctica. It’s nice to know that people everywhere are pretty much the same!

James

Really?! What do you do with planes which uses remote stands?
I have been on a couple of flights in the US, where transportation by bus to a remote stand, was accomplished. One was a 777.

[Mitch24 194]

4 hours ago, Nyxx said:

Looks great and I am sure when in beta they can tweak the speed.

A must buy me thinks.

I fear that they cannot make the people move much faster... the marshaller in the current GSX has the same sluggish walking speed as the aircraft is backing up. I hope it's not a limitation in P3D. Or if they did speed it up it would simply make the human movement extremely unrealistic. 

[F737MAX 5,511]

1 hour ago, honanhal said:

Boarding from buses is almost unheard of in the US, actually. I don’t think I ever boarded a flight from a bus at a remote stand until I went abroad. Jetways are king.

 

55 minutes ago, Anders Bermann said:

I have been on a couple of flights in the US, where transportation by bus to a remote stand, was accomplished. One was a 777.

Surely this is the ultimate pax bus / jetway design.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshuamarks/6101073338

Used at Dulles.

 

[anden145 2,280]

5 minutes ago, F737NG said:

Surely this is the ultimate pax bus / jetway design.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshuamarks/6101073338

 Used at Dulles.

I'm Loving It™

[JoeFackel 760]

27 minutes ago, Mitch24 said:

I fear that they cannot make the people move much faster... the marshaller in the current GSX has the same sluggish walking speed as the aircraft is backing up. I hope it's not a limitation in P3D. Or if they did speed it up it would simply make the human movement extremely unrealistic. 

Walking slowly in the speed of the pushback is pretty fine, the only thing that buggers me a bit is his "zombiespeed" back to the ramp 😉

Ideal would be if the animated people have slight different speeds: some faster, some slower (like the old grandma with her cane ;-))

Of course it can be a limitation of the animation engine, i'm sure Umberto can lighten us up about the speedrestriction. 

[virtuali 4,419]

1 minute ago, JoeFackel said:

Ideal would be if the animated people have slight different speeds: some faster, some slower (like the old grandma with her cane ;-))

Of course it can be a limitation of the animation engine, i'm sure Umberto can lighten us up about the speedrestriction. 

Tweaking the speed of any animation in GSX is one of the easiest things to do, since it only requires changing a single number (the fps) in the couatl.anim_xxxxx lines in the object SIM.CFG file.

However, for human animations, it's best not overdo it and not set an fps value much higher than the one the animation was originally made for (usually 30), because a too different value might result in an "old Chaplin movie" effect, with walking cycles starting to look funny.

And yes, each character has his own speed/pace/attitude, they have been individually animated trying to give each one of them a different personality. They are not just clones, like different models with recycled animations: each has a different walking style, and they can be tweaked independently, otherwise they wouldn't look like a realistic crowd.

About the other questions:

- GSX Level 2 focuses on two main features: Jetways and Passengers. It wouldn't make any sense to not have them fully integrated so yes, passengers will walk through jetways too, and with the glass window models, they can be easily seen from the outside. We usually show them in the Bus, because they made more impact when they are outside of the apron and climb the boarding stairs, but jetways will support them entirely and they will also work with SODE jetways that come with 3rd party airports not made with GSX, since we get the required parameters (basically, the jetway type and the height from ground) from the SODE GSX interface.

- Yes, we will rewamp the Pushback. This should be the next planned update to the core GSX program (which means it will be FREE). Same as last year, when we took the existing not-so-good Refueling procedure and remade it from scratch, Pushback will be taken care of, making it more flexible, with the ability to define multiple custom routes for each parking, and save them and, with Push/Pull ability, which makes every kind of exit possible, in addition to allowing gate-to-gate pushback and push-ins to.

Pushback has always been one of the cornerstone of GSX so, be sure we are not neglecting it. It's just that improving jetways and having animated passenger was the most requested feature by users by far, so we worked on that one first.

Some other things people might have missed:

We'll have two L: variables that airplane developers can use: one they can *write* into, to tell GSX the number of passenger to board/deboard, from the airplane point of view, instead of having GSX estimating it from the station load. And, while boarding/deboarding, another L: variable the airplane code can *read*, will keep a running counter of the passengers that entered/exited the plane, so they can do anything they want with it, like updating the airplane load and change the W/B in realtime. The next update for the FSLabs A320/319 will feature this, and I spoke to several airplane developers both at the Flightsimexpo and privately, and they seem to be eager to add this feature, since it's very easy to use.

Same for jetway power and air: we'll publish two L: variables, so airplane developers can check whether a jetway with either a power unit or an air unit has connected, and eventually turn on the related systems in their own simulation.